Quiet Dawn
by Skade
Summary: A mistake. An abandonment. A traitor in the making...


Untitled Document

**_Quiet  
Dawn_**

-

It was quiet, she noticed.

Too quiet for her comfort. The sunlight from the dawn was streaming down on her.

Her head hurt.

After a few moments of laying there, her thought processes finally decided to fully kick in. Where was she, what was this place? This wasn't home. Why was there a throbbing pain in the middle of her forhead? Her vision... it was so much different... She couldn't tell the heat of things, save the floor she was touching. And what were these odd hues that the world suddenly took on? How strange - how very strange.

Footsteps clomped by the door of the room. Startled, she half scrambled up - then paused. Her chest constricted tighter with fear. What was that sound...? _And why did her body do that?_

Horror flitted across her face as her memory slowly came back to her. A bright light... some sort of accident... Her master's hasty call for her to get out of the way... To late - a strange and painful feeling - blackness...

She looked at herself. Her hands, her feet. Her hair, a ligh gray-green, swishing in front of her face.

This... this couldn't have happened. In a moment her master would poke her awake, laugh at her nightmare, and momentarily scold her for sleeping so much. Yet the sliver of ice down her throat made her know that it was true...

She had failed him. She had failed him for the last time...

"No." The word in a whisper fell from her lips, human, ugly. "No, no. Please no..."

She gave a shivering sob. Why, why was her new body crying these tears of saline? Why was she instinctively curling up into a ball? Why... why?

The rough materiel of the robes she was wearing felt strange against her skin, the plush carpet was what she ran her hands over. So many different things, she was a stranger to this world. She had to be strong. Yes, strong... maybe it was just her master testing her.

Fevered determination silencing her sobs, Nagini slowly rose in her now-human body...

-

It was an interesting paradox.

Between her clumsiness with her new limbs and her hunger, the assortment of nicks, cuts, and bruises she soon collected was amazing. Nagini did not, however, find it amusing in the least when she tripped over her robes, or when her shin grazed the coffee table, or... well. There were too many incidents to count.

When she finally stumbled into the kitchen, she had the overwhelmingly nice feeling that she was - almost - getting the hang of walking. Shakily clinging to the wall, she looked around. The apartment she was trapped in was obviously Muggle, to her dissapointment and annoyance.

Shoving open the cabenet doors (and flinching when they slammed), she glared at the shelves. Nearly bare. _Nearly_ bare, save one jar of... something. Nagini squinted her eyes, fighting to read the human words and glad that her master had tought her.

"Peanut Butter".

What on earth was peanut butter?

Nagini supposed there was only one way to find out.

Fumbling the jar as she worked the lid and seal off, she stared for a long moment at the light-brown substance. It didn't smell like poison. In fact, it smelled pretty good.

She scooped some out with a hand and carefully licked it off.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

Another scoop. It was delicious.

Another scoop. It was _wonderful..._

With reckless abandon, Nagini dug deeper and deeper into the jar as she slid to the floor to sit, already composing an ode to peanut butter in her mind.

An hour later, hands still slightly sticky, Nagini happily sat on the sofa. This wasn't as bad as she had first thought... not at all. Maybe this wasn't a test, but maybe her master had abandoned her. But that wasn't so bad.

She'd do fine.

With a yawn, Nagini began to realise that she was getting sleepy...

Yes, she'd do fine... this wasn't bad at all.

As she closed her eyes, she layed on the couch and gave a little sigh before she went to sleep.

What she didn't know is that many, many miles away, people knew more then she did about what had happened.

Severus Snape had been there, told the news to Dumbledore. Dumbledore passed it along to Harry Potter. Another student overheard, soon it spread across Hogwarts like wildfire. _The Daily Prophet_ picked the story up. The news spread.

And spread.

And spread.

Soon everyone knew the plight of Nagini, the entire story, when Nagini herself couldn't even puzzle out what had happened.

But it didn't really matter, because she was asleep, and the world passes you by in sleep and worries drift away. She was happy, and everything would be fine.

-

AN: Quite an interesting little story I've got here, eh? I'm going to have a lot of fun with this.

It was inspired by a quote from Fisher's song _Simi California_:

_"In Simi  
I can't see  
How I can sleep  
Inside a creep  
Like me..."_

I saw this as Nagini talking about herself. Of course, she's not in Simi California, she's somewhere in England (I think). I'll sort it out in the next chapter - yes, there will be a next chapter, so stay tuned! Same 'fic time, same 'fic channel! (gah, see what my mom's done to me with old reruns of Batman...)

It was also inspired by Autopoesis' _Rebell 2000 _and _Accidental Millenium._ They're an MP3.com band, so go check them out, they have great music! I listened to both of those songs while writing this, so I'm listing it for your amusement.

Usual disclaimer applies. I'm not J.K. Rowling, and everything appearing in the Harry Potter series of books in this fanfic belongs to her and not meeee!

...if you read this far it's sort of pointless to not review...


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